What is Startup Weekend?

Startup Weekend is a global network of passionate leaders and entrepreneurs on a mission to inspire, educate, and empower individuals, teams and communities. Come share ideas, form teams, and launch startups.

Past event…

Ever wondered what it takes to be an entrepreneur?

The professional and personal challenges, the high and lows, the failures and the success?

Startup Weekend is a global grassroots movement of active and empowered entrepreneurs who are learning the basics of founding startups and launching successful ventures. It is the largest community of passionate entrepreneurs with over 1800 past events in 120 countries around the world in 2014.

The non-profit organization is headquartered in Seattle, Washington but Startup Weekend organizers and facilitators can be found in over 200 cities around the world. From Mongolia to South Africa to London to Brazil, people around the globe are coming together for weekend long workshops to pitch ideas, form teams, and start companies.

All Startup Weekend events follow the same basic model: anyone is welcome to pitch their startup idea and receive feedback from their peers. Teams organically form around the top ideas (as determined by popular vote) and then it’s a 54 hour frenzy of business model creation, coding, designing, and market validation. The weekends culminate with presentations in front of local entrepreneurial leaders with another opportunity for critical feedback.

Whether entrepreneurs found companies, find a cofounder, meet someone new, or learn a skill far outside their usual 9-to-5, everyone is guaranteed to leave the event better prepared to navigate the chaotic but fun world of startups. If you want to put yourself in the shoes of an entrepreneur, register now for the best weekend of your life!

The 6th edition of Startup Weekend Moldova will be organized on November 14-16, 2014 at Ginta Latina/French Alliance.

Dorian Postevca

A dreamer. He believes that information could change the world. You just have to take a path and stick to it till one day it will blow everybody’s mind. Today his path is mobile industry. Doesn’t matter if it’s communication services, apps or devices - he tries to see them altogether. During his work at Orange he is managing company’s internet services, while in spare time he builds iOS apps and tries online entrepreneurship . With more than 10 years of management and marketing experience in telco industry, he will try to identify and support the best team of Moldovan startups “beauty contest”.

Roman Stirbu

Director of Internet Development Department at Simpals. Roman is an expert in the field of project management in IT projects - he created and developed high-load Internet projects using the following technologies – ASP.NET, Memcached, Hadoop/Hive/Hbase, Mongodb, Sphinx, Nginx. Roman also is the initiator creator of Agile Moldova Community. Can explain to startupers which technologies to use to implement their projects.

Martin Gruner

One of the most experienced Estonian hackers with 10+ hackathons under belt. He has invaluable experience how to get almost any code done over a weekend! He is co-founder of Aplefly Games, Estonian second largest game studio concentrated on smartphone and tablet games. Martin has over 8 years of experience leading software companies.

Timothy Ong

Tim is a Program Development Officer at USAID with international development experience in Moldova, Sri Lanka, and Azerbaijan. He also has over 10 years of business development experience with a Fortune 500 telecom company, catering to Microsoft and Boeing. In his prior life, he was an aspiring database programmer.

Krists Avots

Krists is running operations of Garage48: the extreme start-up schooling event series. Also he is a lecturer and entrepreneurship course manager at SSE Riga which was ranked as top #20 business school in Europe by Financial Times.

Marcel Sobieski

Red Sky

CEO of polish Red Sky branch in Moldova since 2011 and in IT business since 2007. Focused on multimedia, B2B and B2C start-ups and investments. Previously managed a Swiss and Liechtenstein company. With an MBA in business he is specialized in Product & Project Management and SEM. Interested in building scalable in-house start-ups from idea to breakeven, attracting funds and growing the scale thru existing partners and channels.

Jaan Kruusma

Jaan Kruusma is the co-founder of one of the very first social media agencies in Estonia (7Blaze) and is therefore the mastermind behind some of the most well-known social media campaigns in Estonia.

Coaches

Helen Kokk

Helen has a background of graphic design, 3D and user interface. Currently she is workng with challenging projects all over the world. Examples includes TeliaSonera in Scandinavia, 3D solutions in Italy, Skype etc. From the start-up world she is actively working with Plumbr with her expertise in user interface and user experience. Needless to say that she can consult you with all the questions related to graphic design and user behaviour.

Krists Avots

Garage48

Krists is running operations of Garage48: the extreme start-up schooling event series. Also he is a lecturer and entrepreneurship course manager at SSE Riga which was ranked as top #20 business school in Europe by Financial Times.

Jaan Kruusma

Jaan Kruusma is the co-founder of one of the very first social media agencies in Estonia (7Blaze) and is therefore the mastermind behind some of the most well-known social media campaigns in Estonia.

Maret Kruve

Having a background in front- end development & UX/UI design and lot's of experience with hackathons, she can share tips and tricks how to make things happen fast or at least fake it, until making it is possible. She is leading development of internet services of Estonian Public Broadcasting

Martin Gruner

One of the most experienced Estonian hackers with 10+ hackathons under belt. He has invaluable experience how to get almost any code done over a weekend! He is co-founder of Aplefly Games, Estonian second largest game studio concentrated on smartphone and tablet games. Martin has over 8 years of experience leading software companies.

Alexandru Popescu

Alexandru is Internet Marketing Coordinator at Orange Moldova & has more than 8 years of professional experience in marketing & product development. He develops consumer services to use the power of digital medium & contributes actively to several leading online projects. Passionate about innovation on user experience, social and science, Alexandru is wishful to share his knowledge with startup teams.

Marcel Sobieski

CEO of polish Red Sky branch in Moldova since 2011 and in IT business since 2007. Focused on multimedia, B2B and B2C start-ups and investments. Previously managed a Swiss and Liechtenstein company. With an MBA in business he is specialized in Product & Project Management and SEM. Interested in building scalable in-house start-ups from idea to breakeven, attracting funds and growing the scale thru existing partners and channels.

Vadim Zhelyaskov

Project manager of 999 Market Place

He has 10 years of experience in the field of e-commerce. His first major project was gsm.md. At the same time he actively participated in the development and promotion of the free bulletin board 999.md. Today 999.md is the most visited website in Moldova.

A few years ago, Vadim launched e-lending system for online shops. He is ready to share his experience with young entrepreneurs as he has a good knowledge of the Moldovan e-commerce market.

Petru Jucovschi

Microsoft

Petru Jucovschi is a Developer Evangelist at Microsoft working with designers and developers to unleash breakthrough innovations.
A subject matter expert on mobile and cloud industry trends, Petru is a go-to person at Microsoft Romania for topics related to HTML 5, Windows 8, Windows Phone and Windows Azure.

Organizers

Ionela Titirez

Passionate about online entrepreneurship for several years and thrilled to be involved in building the eco-system for its development.
Currently works at USAID CEED II Project Moldova as IT Industry Managers and, among other activities, coordinates the organization of entrepreneurial events.